Great Post but seriously with Yext? Congratulations on their funding but it seems REALLY over played. People have ALWAYS manipulated local search and will continue to do so. Anyone asking Yelp investors about their ROI right now?Haven't turned Dime one of profit last time I checked.

Paid text links, and yes we are a broker as well, have less to do with Panda, and more to do with Penguin. And Penguin has to do with a variety of off-page factors.

Foremost, over-optimizing your anchors. This means, your anchors, as a base percentage have far too much of your most valued short tail search terms. Having to high of a percentage of keyword heavy, unbranded anchors, and you are likely to get penalized.

Secondly, "double dipping" on various "exact match anchors"... whether you are white hat or not, it's not natural to have a bunch of links that all have exact match anchor text.

eg: Having dozens of links with the anchor Buy Cheap Golf Clubs and the links as pointing to: